The Most Devastating Movie Breakup Lines of All Time

Have a look at 6 legendary relationship-enders.

By Wesley Baines

Paramount Pictures

Breakfast at Tiffany's

"You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken. You've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'OK, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness. You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing. You’re terrified somebody is going to stick you in a cage. Well, baby—you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or on the East by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”

Said by George Peppard’s character, Paul Varjak, to Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly in the classic Breakfast at Tiffany's, this break-up line has a certain quality that makes it all the more devastating—it’s true.

When Paul confronts Holly about his love for her, she rejects him, equating love with a “cage.” But when Paul cuts to the core of her issues—that her fear of love will leave her isolated wherever she goes—she relents, and after the world’s shortest break-up, they find one another in the rain, ending the film with a passionate kiss.